"Reality Distortion Field" is a modern day cop out. A tool
used by men that lack the intellectual curiosity to explain
the world, and can deploy at will to explain excitement or
success in the market place. Invoking this magical super
power saves the writer from doing actual work and research.
It is
a con
perpetuated against the readers.

The expression
originated as an observation made by those that worked
with Steve to describe his convincing passion. It was insider
joke/expression which has now been hijacked by sloppy
journalists when any subject is over their head.

The
official Steve
Jobs biography left much to be desired. Here a journalist
was given unprecedented access to Steve Jobs and get answers
to thousands of questions that we have to this day. How did
he approach problems? Did he have a method? How did he
really work with his team? How did he turn his passion for
design into products? How did he make strategic decisions
about the future of Apple? How did the man balance
engineering and marketing problems?

The biography has some interesting anecdotes, but fails to
answer any of these questions. The biographer was not really
interested in understanding or explaining Steve Jobs. He
collected a bunch of anecdotes, stringed them together in
chronological order, had the text edited and cashed out.

Whenever the story gets close to an interesting historical
event, or starts exploring a big unknown of Steve's work, we
are condescendingly told that "Steve Activated the Reality
Distortion Field".

Every. Single. Time.

Not once did the biographer try to uncover what made people
listen to Steve. Not once did he try to understand the
world in which Steve operated. The breakthroughs of his work
are described with the same passion as a Reuters news feed: an
enumeration of his achievements glued with anecdotes to glue
the thing together.

Consider the iPhone: I would have loved to know how the
iPhone project was conceived. What internal process took
place that allowed Apple to gain the confidence to become a
phone manufacturer. There is a fascinating story of the
people that made this happen, millions of details of how this
project was evaluated and what the vision for the project was
down to every small detail that Steve cared about.

Instead of learning about the amazing hardware and software
engineering challenges that Steve faced, we are told over and
over that all Steve had to do was activate his special super
power.

The biography in short, is a huge missed opportunity.
Unprecedented access to a man that reshaped entire industries
and all we got was some gossip.

The "Reality Distortion Field" is not really a Steve Jobs
super-power, it is a special super power that the technical
press uses every time they are too lazy to do research.

Why do expensive and slow user surveys, or purchase
expensive research from analysts to explain why some product
is doing well, or why people are buying it when you can just
slap a "they activated the Reality Distortion Field and sales
went through the roof" statement in your article.

As of today, a Google News search for "Reality Distortion
Field Apple" reports 532 results for the last month.

Perhaps this is just how the tech press must operate
nowadays. There is just no time to do research as new
products are being unveiled around the clock, and you need to
deliver opinions and analysis on a daily basis.

But as readers, we deserve better. We should reject these
explanations for what they are: a cheap grifter trick.